History and Future of the Book (EL336)tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2007-08-07:/EL336/2010//332010-04-14T20:45:16ZDennis G. Jerz, Spring 2010, Seton Hill UniversityMovable Type Commercial 4.23-enFinal Paper Revisiontag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121312010-05-13T18:18:41Z2010-04-14T20:45:16ZClass does not meet. Post your final revision to Turnitin.com....Dennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu
]]>
Portfolio 3tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121322010-05-10T18:19:47Z2010-04-14T18:21:58ZClass will not meet on this day. Submit your final online portfolio by posting a link here....Dennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu
Class will not meet on this day. Submit your final online portfolio by posting a link here.
Ex 5: Of Emergence and Knowledge in the [??] Eratag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121362010-05-06T20:27:12Z2010-04-14T20:42:42ZYou name the era we are heading into.Write a three-page paper that demonstrates your ability to apply assigned readings to your own experience reading (and studying, and analyzing, and annotating) an academic etext.As with the other exercises, I am expecting...Dennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu Write a three-page paper that demonstrates your ability to apply assigned readings to your own experience reading (and studying, and analyzing, and annotating) an academic etext.
As with the other exercises, I am expecting you to engage meaningfully with direct quotes taken from our assigned readings.
This assignment also asks you to report your first-hand experience with ebook tools and resources that are currently available.
A Kindle is available for you to check out at the library; I have pre-loaded it with some media-related books.
I will also loan my own Kindle overnight if you schedule with me in advance.
If you have an iPhone, you can use the Kindle app.
You can also download a free Kindle reader for a PC or Mac. (There are plenty of free Kindle books.)
As of April 14, there are about 10 iPads at SHU. I don't know who will get them, or whether they will be available for students to try out. If you can get ahold of an iPad, wonderful!
I have not tried it out, but here is a link to a free trial of a "PDF Annotator" tool. Is it useful for scholars? Can you find a different tool that might be better?
books.google.com (see for yourself whether Darnton's hopes/fears for Google are accurate)
]]>
CP4: In Defense of Digital Culturetag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121352010-05-04T19:46:05Z2010-04-14T20:26:44ZCreative Presentation 4.Topic: defend a particular position on anything we've covered in the course. (While I am giving you free reign to choose a topic from any unit, I am asking you to choose something specific. Please feel free to...Dennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu Topic: defend a particular position on anything we've covered in the course. (While I am giving you free reign to choose a topic from any unit, I am asking you to choose something specific. Please feel free to run ideas past me.)
Medium: your in-class presentation should demonstrate your successful engagement with, and use of, digital technology, in a manner that emphasizes the unique qualities of digital media.
I used Screencast on my MacBook to create the interactive fiction playthroughs. Is there a game, or a website, or a database, or a piece of software that you could demonstrate (or critique)? (The IT department may be able to let you use a Mac in order to do the capturing. Contact Mary Spataro at spataro@setonhill.edu.)
It is possible to add buttons to YouTube videos, so that a viewer could choose to play clip A or clip B -- so you could make a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure video. (Note that, if you use copyrighted material, YouTube may take your video down at any time. FYI.)
]]>
Breaking Story: New Media Content and Formtag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121612010-04-29T17:46:09Z2010-04-28T22:44:12ZDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu The backstory... a prototype of the next iPhone was recently found in a bar. Somehow that prototype ended up being purchased by a popular technology publication (variously described as a blog, an online tabloid, or some variety of online journalism).
Was the phone lost or stolen? Should the website have paid for the phone? Does it make a difference that this was a huge scoop, and there would have been no other way to get this story (since Apple doesn't let anyone preview its products)? Cops raided the office of the blogger who posted an analysis of the prototype... yet journalists are supposed to be exempt from this kind of intrusion, since it would have a chilling effect on the coverage of police and political corruption. (Is Apple using the cops as thugs-for-hire, to control the free press? Who decides when a blogger is a journalist?)
The situation is still unfolding, and there are so many unanswered questions that Fast Company has published an infographic (by Sheryl Sulistawan and Tyler Gray) and a series of hyperlinked blog entries by Dan Nasowitz.
For this activity, I'd like you to spend a few minutes exploring the issue in class. Then, I will ask you to comment on
the substance of the story (as you interpret it based on the infographic and the blog entries) and
the form of the story (both visual and hypertextual, with special reference to Aarseth's Cybertext).
If you prefer, here is a more traditional layout of the same story. ]]>
Darnton (Ch 2-4)tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121342010-04-29T15:45:29Z2010-04-28T21:42:09ZWhat can we learn from the anxieties, and hopes, expressed by Darnton -- a traditionalist who (by Ch 4) explains his reasons for wanting to write an e-Book?...Dennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu
What can we learn from the anxieties, and hopes, expressed by Darnton -- a traditionalist who (by Ch 4) explains his reasons for wanting to write an e-Book?
Memex & Bucklandtag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121402010-04-27T21:41:48Z2010-04-14T22:52:07ZEmanuel Goldberg, Electronic Document Retrieval, And Vannevar Bush's MemexDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu
As We May Think" (I assigned it in EL236, but I'm not assigning the whole article this time -- this online handout should provide you with what you need to know). It provides you with background information that will help you understand the assigned text, which is Buckland's analysis of the pre-history of the imaginary machine Bush described.
Bush proposed (but nobody ever built) a mechanical device that would permit a reader to locate, annotate, and connect individual microfilm pages.
The actions he describes seem trivial to us today, just as a photocopier, or a spill-proof ball-point pen, or an eraser-tipped pencil are so much a part of our scholarly life that we can hardly comprehend their revolutionary impact upon our productivity.
]]>
human knowledge is expanding at a rate faster than the
individual researcher can hope to keep up. Individual researchers are spending an increasing amount of time sifting
through the not-so-good stuff, in the hopes of finding the good stuff.
Our experience of researching is materially different. When we find a database query returns thousands of hits, it's trivial
for us to supply different search terms, and narrow our focus. But just a generation ago, vising a well-stocked library, with hundreds
of books on each subject, would require the researcher to spend a huge amount of time filtering the potential selections -- picking them up, flipping through them, and deciding which ones were worth further time.
Bush proposed the "memex" as a tool that would help scholars locate, comment on, and connect information. It would make copies of individual pages from different sources, and assemble them -- along with the researcher's hand-written notes -- in a microfilm codex, which could be stored, duplicated, shared, and further modified.
Here's how Wikipedia describes the machine and its uses:
The memex is a device in which an individual compresses and
stores
all of their books, records, and communications which is then mechanized
so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. A
document can be given a simple numerical code that allows the user to
access it after dialing the number combination. Documents are also able
to be edited in real-time. This process makes
annotation fast and simple. The memex is an enlarged intimate supplement
to one's memory. [2]
The memex has influenced the development of subsequential hypertext
and intellect augmenting computer systems.
A memex consists of a desk, where on top are slanting translucent
screens on which material can be projected for convenient reading.
Within the desk were mechanisms that stored information through
microphotography. Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm
ready for insertion. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen.
When a longhand note, photograph, memoranda, and other things are in
place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the
next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being
employed.
-- "Memex"
(Wikipedia)
Here's a video that attempts to illustrate the operation of the memex.
While the specific technological solutions that Bush proposed seem antiquated, he was spot on when he predicted the result when instant location, connection, and annotation became universal parts of the scholarly process.
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made
with a mesh of
associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the
memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated
opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of
friends and authorities....The physician, puzzled by a patient's
reactions, strikes the
trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly
through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics
for the pertinent anatomy and histology. ... The historian, with a vast
chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which
stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary
trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch.
There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in
the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the
common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his
additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire
scaffolding by which they were erected. --Vannevar Bush, "As We May
Think"
Compare the final part of the above quote to the complaint of Socrates
-- that the written word cannot capture the full range of knowledge that
we find in the brain of a teacher. And consider what we have already
discussed about how our definition of "knowledge" changes when we are
confident that we can look up an answer, and so we change our focus from
memorizing information that would otherwise be lost, to memorizing the
strategies (such as alphabetization or keyword look-ups) that will help
us find specific information when we need it.
Finally, read this recent academic study that describes the precursors
to the memex.
The various parts of the above document are not all of the same interest
to our course. Let me try to help you prioritize.
I suggest that you read the abstract and the first few sections,
through "The Technology of the Memex."
Beginning with "Microfilm selectors," skim the next few pages --
that level of technical information is not really pertinent to a theory
course like ours..
Slow down so that you get the gist of "Emmanuel Goldberg," "1931
International Congress of Photography" and "Who Knew What When?"
Slow down even more, and read for comprehension get to "The
European Documentalists" and "Bush Reassessed."
Before you read the conclusion, go back and read the abstract
again.
Now read "Conclusions."
Note that the plan I just outlined for you -- knowing when to read for
detail, when to read for comprehension, and what to skip -- is exactly
the kind of knowledge Bush hoped his memex would let scholars share,
automatically and routinely. I would give a different list of priorities
for a different audience, in a different class, reading for a different
purpose.]]>
Ex 4tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121302010-04-27T16:58:43Z2010-04-22T14:07:07ZTopic: Of Interaction and Knowledge in the Amazon/Google EraDemonstrate your ability to relate what you have learned so far to a recent magazine article or news feature that describes a current trend or a recent innovation (within your lifetime) that...Dennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu Demonstrate your ability to relate what you have learned so far to a recent magazine article or news feature that describes a current trend or a recent innovation (within your lifetime) that relates to the development of the book (or related concepts, such as authorship/publication/reading/archiving). By "relate" I mean please quote from, and use meaningfully, the assigned readings in order to defend a position on a current topic.
Defend a specific, debatable claim (rather than explaining a situation or describing progress).
Note that I am going to ask you to speculate about the future in Ex 5, so stick to the recent past and the present for Ex 4.
While "interaction" and "knowledge" are both very broad subjects, note that were are exploring those topics from within the perspective of the history and future of the book, so please try to keep some grounding in issues of reading/writing/authorship/publication/reproduction, while still making room for a treatment of the characteristics of new media.
Demonstrate your ability to apply the readings to your chosen topic.
You may choose a popular source such as Wired, or a source that relates to your career or cultural interests. You may also choose to respond to an academic article.
Cite your sources according to MLA style (including a Works Cited list).
]]>
Aarseth (Ch 6 & 9)tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121282010-04-22T16:58:44Z2010-04-22T14:07:28ZDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu What makes the passages different?
As a student who has been asked to demonstrate an ability to engage with this text, what are some good strategies that can help you make sense of advanced material? ]]>
Plato, "The Allegory of the Cave"tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121252010-04-22T16:57:27Z2010-04-22T14:06:36Z(Originally assigned for Apr 20; discussion moved to today.)In this excerpt from The Republic, Plato spins an extended metaphor that uses the fuzzy shadows cast from firelight to stand for the imperfect way that we comprehend our world when we...Dennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu In this excerpt from The Republic, Plato spins an extended metaphor that uses the fuzzy shadows cast from firelight to stand for the imperfect way that we comprehend our world when we do not use the light of reason. Without the light of reason, we are like prisoners chained in a cave, who never see daylight, and never look at objects themselves. As prisoners, we base all that they know on their understanding of the fuzzy shadows of things, rather than the direct observation of things themselves. (How can we apply this story to our own exploration of media?)
]]>
Portfolio 2tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121272010-04-22T16:24:26Z2010-04-14T16:24:45ZDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.eduPaper 2 Drafttag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121412010-04-20T20:46:52Z2010-04-20T13:38:48ZDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu Use brief, direct quotations from scholarly sources to support a debatable claim -- something that a reasonable person would disagree with -- that arises from the readings.
Avoid vague references to what "some people may say" -- give the name of a person who holds that view, and quote the exact words that make you think the person holds that view. (You may paraphrase, but you still need to cite the source of a paraphrase.) ]]>
Paper Workshoptag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121372010-04-20T19:42:45Z2010-04-15T15:47:05ZDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.eduAarseth (Ch 8)tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121242010-04-20T16:56:50Z2010-04-12T16:57:23ZDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.eduDarnton (Ch 1)tag:jerz.setonhill.edu,2010:/EL336/2010//33.121262010-04-20T16:13:42Z2010-04-12T17:14:09ZDennis G. Jerzhttp://jerz.setonhill.edu